Why I needed to take 30,000 photographs - and may need 30,000 more

Two benches, five birches, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Snow, ice and birches, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Ducks and melting ice, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today was a sunny day, after a rainy day which melted a lot of the snow and made streets extremely slippery when the temperature slipped again below 0 °C. But it was bright, and as the sun stays up quite long nowadays, I stopped after work for a moment at the Laajalahti bay to take a few photographs. Here are three of them, in which I tried to catch the brightness of the sunshine on snow.

The Laajalahti has become a sort of laboratory for me. I return there every few weeks to try to see whether I can discover something new, see the landscape with new eyes. This is one of the most familiar landscapes for me as I lived for years in the campus area while studying, and also my work career has mostly been in this area. Thus, I can test myself in trying to see with fresh eyes things which are familiar and commonplace.

My hypothesis is that photography can be a way of seeing things which are not usually seen even though they are visible for all to see. This is of course not a novel idea, and many photographers have progressed far on this road, but I have only recently realized that there is a route this way.

I have been thinking about why I have been taking so many photographs during the last six months, and whether it has been of any use at all.

I haven't reached any final conclusions, but I have a feeling I needed to take all of these photographs to start to see beyond the surface of things. During the last dozen years of so I have become so insensitive to seeing and so fixed in routines that I need a massive dose of taking photographs to be able to see what is in front of me.

I suspect I'm not through with this, but I'm slowly improving. One of the recent revelations was the book "The Life of a Photograph" by Sam Abell, which showed in photographs and writing what it means to "make" photographs instead of "taking" them. And how basic, ordinary subjects of photography can turn in skilled hands into poetry, showing the viewers what it means to be human.

I'm very far away from that target, but by practising I hope that I'm able to see better, and thus at least better appreciate photographs taken by others.